


Fragile Diplomacy

by anneapocalypse



Series: Inroads [3]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: F/F, Lack of Communication, Sexting, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-16 02:07:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8082487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anneapocalypse/pseuds/anneapocalypse
Summary: Kimball wonders if Agent Carolina is the kind of person you can ever really know.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Kimball’s physical appearance comes from [this lovely piece](http://misses-unicorn.tumblr.com/post/95942138964/i-just-want-kimball-to-kick-felix-into-that) by [misses-unicorn](http://misses-unicorn.tumblr.com).
> 
> Thanks to my writer chat pals and Larissa for letting me bounce title ideas.
> 
> This is the third fic in a series, and you should probably read the other two first. There will be more after this one.
> 
> Rated M for non-explicit sexual content.

Vanessa Kimball has been sleeping with Agent Carolina for three weeks, and she still doesn’t know her real name.

She thinks of this _after_ she realizes that she doesn’t know Carolina’s rank. Captain Tucker and the Colonel, who have been accompanying Aqua Squad into the field, both seem to accept Carolina as the ranking leader without question. When Kimball asked about it, Tucker merely replied, “Dude, she’s a _Freelancer_ ,” as if that explained everything.

Kimball hasn’t broached the subject with Carolina, because technically, if Carolina doesn’t hold a standard rank, then she’s not under Kimball’s command. And if she isn’t under Kimball’s command then sleeping with her doesn’t carry the same… ethical concerns. At least, she hopes not.

Carolina is, she tells herself, an independent volunteer. Not like Felix—not a mercenary—more like Dr. Grey, who, she’s learned, never officially enlisted with the Federal Army, and is therefore technically a civilian. Somehow that makes it easier to be around the doctor.

Sometimes you have to embrace those ambiguities for all they’re worth.

 

There is no ambiguity in General Doyle’s disdain for her, she is certain of that.

Not only does he have no head for tactics, he openly mocks hers—tactics that have _worked_ , she considers reminding him, in more than a few skirmishes, but that would mean reminding him that they were at war, wouldn’t it. Not that either of them have forgotten.

And he calls her _Miss Kimball_ , which sets her teeth on edge. It makes her sound like a fucking kindergarten teacher. She could swear he puts deliberate emphasis on the _Miss._ Admittedly, it’s hard to discern through his insufferable accent.

She excuses herself from their latest strategy session when her COM pad pings. Vanessa knows better at this point than to check her private messages in public places. And if she’s being honest here, one of Carolina’s private messages sounds damn good right now.

 

Vanessa ducks down a hallway, looking to her left and right to be sure she’s well and truly alone before she unlocks the COM pad and opens the new message. She’s learned her lesson on that. Very nearly been caught by Doyle once and Tucker twice. The Captain of Green Team has an uncanny habit of popping up at the most inopportune times. At least he’s out in the field right now.

Sure enough, Carolina has evidently slipped away from her team long enough to snap a helmet cam shot down the unzipped front of her undersuit. Vanessa laughs, but she takes a good long look, sighing softly at the long pale V of bare skin where the suit lies agape, the little crescents of shadow beneath her small breasts and the soft pink perk of one nipple just visible. Ah.

The accompanying text reads, _took another base in the south. full report when we radio in. be back to refuel right on schedule._

Vanessa smiles, shaking her head, giving the photo one last long, fond look before she closes the message and steels herself to return to the Command Center and General Doyle.

 

Their training facility is repurposed from the fitness center in downtown, the big full-featured one with expensive subscriptions for rich people. Vanessa had been inside once, as a kid, on a day trip with her summer camp, with a signed permission slip from her mom. She remembers how sprawling and fancy and _big_ the place seemed when she was fourteen, lying on the mats in the yoga room with a girl she ended up kissing. They got caught by a counselor who only laughed it off, said not to get themselves into trouble, and kept on walking.

The girl’s name was Sayuri, the counselor’s name was Olive, and Vanessa has never forgotten either of them. On the days when _a better tomorrow_ feels like a dying ember of hope, theirs are among the many names with which she answers for herself the question, _What do you fight for?_

The gym doesn’t seem much smaller even now that she is grown, and just being here, _taking_ all of this for herself and her people, feels quietly but deliciously transgressive, even if they are sharing with the Feds. Indoor tennis and grifball and squash courts, every kind of athletic training equipment you could imagine, an Olympic-size swimming pool and a rock-climbing wall down one end of it. Everything dusty and abandoned, but mostly still functional.

It was at once thrilling and a bit sobering, to watch her young troops swarm the enormous facility, shouting their discoveries over the radio: “Holy shit, bowling!” “Volleyball nets! We have to play!” “General, can we fill the pool?” “We don’t have running water yet, dumbass.” “Wow, nice weight room in here.” “What are you s’posed to do with a giant soccer ball anyway?” “General, tell Captain Grif he can’t just claim the whole snack bar!”

Meanwhile she overheard one of the Feds saying, “Man, this place is a dump now. Too bad.”

 

While Wash got to work setting up the indoor track area for drills, Carolina honed right in on the climbing wall, set at one end of the room that housed the Olympic-size swimming pool. Vanessa came in to find her halfway up the hardest part of the wall, where it slanted sharply out over the floor. “Carolina! What are you doing?”

Carolina laughed, reaching for an impossibly tiny handhold. She was unarmored, wearing only her sleek black undersuit, unzipped just to her collarbone, hugging every compact curve. A light blue harness sat snugly around her waist and upper thighs. “Relax. I’m on belay.”

“Isn’t… somebody supposed to do that for you? Or, spot you? Or something?”

Carolina pulled the slack smoothly out of the double line locked into her harness, the working end of rope lying bright orange against her hip and hanging to the floor where the end lay in a loose coil. “It’s a self-belay. They had a Grigri. Don’t worry, it’s safe. I tested it.”

Vanessa refrained from asking _how_ , exactly, Carolina had tested it. “What about your leg?”

“Relax, Vanessa, I’m _fine_. I’m not running a marathon up here.”

She watched—what else could she do?—as Carolina clambered with effortless grace over the edge of the tilted wall, flew up the last few straight footholds like they were nothing and gave the bell at the top a triumphant ring that echoed the length of the long room. She moved almost like she was in zero g, like she weighed nothing at all, like nothing in the universe could hold her down.

 

Carolina hand-picked her squad, from a mixed pool of soldiers she and Wash ran ragged with drills and obstacles that first week they arrived in the Capital. She selected a mix of the fastest and most weapon-proficient troops from both armies, and she took a no-nonsense approach to their integration.

“Aqua Squad! Form up!”

Sarge took his place at her right side, Tucker at her left. Even Vanessa found herself pulling her spine up straighter. Carolina had one hell of a command voice. Not that she hadn’t heard it—well, something like it. But it was different to watch her here, truly in her element—to see white and tan helmets alike snap to attention and fall in line, silent, purposeful, and ready for action. United, at least for the moment.

“I am Agent Carolina,” she barks, meeting every single soldier’s eye as she looks her squad over. “I serve the _united_ forces of Chorus, and you,” a slow and deadly smile was spreading across her face, “now belong to me.”

The Republic soldiers looked terrified. The Feds, who had already met a Freelancer, looked even more so.

“Beginning today, we will be launching an aggressive campaign against the remaining Charon troops stationed at outposts around Chorus. You will work as a _team_. You will remember who your _enemy_ is. You will _defend_ one another, as fellow soldiers. And I _expect_ to bring every single one of you _home_ when the mission is _completed_.” Carolina paced slowly and deliberately from one end of the line to the other, a bright blue plasma rifle in one hand, running the index and middle finger of her other hand slowly and precisely along the top of the glossy barrel as she spoke. “Understood?”

_“Yes, ma’am.”_

“Any questions before we move out?”

One Federal soldier, an engineer named Corbin, raised his hand tentatively. “Uh… Agent?”

“Speak up, Specialist.”

“Can we uh, use the bathroom first?”

Kimball genuinely had no idea what kind of response to expect from Carolina, but her aquamarine helmet jerked in the direction of the door, and there was amusement in her voice when she spoke. “You have ten minutes. Do your business, collect your gear, and regroup at the helipad. Dismissed!”

The “helipad” was the rooftop basketball court, but the way Carolina said it, Kimball would have believed anything.

 

She can’t imagine it’s all been smooth sailing out in the field, but since their deployment, Aqua Squad has logged success after success. According to Carolina’s reports, which she sends frequently and in concise detail, most of Charon’s research outposts were sparsely staffed, unprepared for a full assault.

“It won’t last,” Carolina warns Kimball on vidCOM in her official check-in. She has helmet hair, bangs pinned back out of her face and the rest flattened, and her green eyes flash bright in the midday sun. “We still have the numbers, but our element of surprise is about used up. They’ll be regrouping now. We have to be prepared for anything.”

Kimball nods. “How are you on supplies?”

“Better than expected. We took some provisions from the last outpost. Could probably get away with another few days out here, put off the resupply. Save on fuel.”

Vanessa feels a tug of disappointment, just a little.

“No,” she says. “You should return to base for your resupply as planned. Your troops could use the R&R.” And I’ll get to see you, she thinks. More of you than the photos you keep sending. Not that I haven’t been enjoying them.

Carolina flashes her a smile, reserved, but with a smug gleam in her eyes. “You got it, General.”

 

The Pelican touches down right on schedule and Aqua Squad files out onto the roof, weapons holstered, confident strides, smiles even, as they pull their helmets off and head for the stairs. Tucker and Sarge follow, chattering easily, Vanessa notices, as though _they_ were never opponents, Red and Blue rivals in a fictional conflict on some far-away planet. Perhaps it seems like a lifetime ago to them, so distant as to feel irrelevant now. She’s heard Sarge’s “dirty Blue” comments a few times, but Tucker and the others seem to laugh that off, mostly. She tries to imagine it, the war so far behind them as to be able to laugh at _g-man_ and _cave rat_ , the hostilities that still twist rage and fear in her stomach becoming a memory far removed. Every mealtime, it seems, Wash breaks up fights in the mess hall, shoving himself between young hotheaded feds and rebels intent on coming to blows over whatever petty slights they can conjure—a look, a tone of voice, the last banana.

She stops thinking about it when Carolina emerges from the Pelican at last.

Carolina glows. She is almost the color of the sky—a shade brighter. One upside to Armonia lying barren and without power for so long, the industrial smog has had a chance to disperse a bit, and the sky is bluer than it was, or at any rate less yellow.

She steps clear of the Pelican and the back hatch closes behind her, engines roaring as the ships lifts off the roof to dock atop one of the neighboring buildings. The basketball court is the closest LZ to the Command Center, and there isn’t room for more than one bird at a time. The thrusters kick up a hot, dusty wind as she goes, but Carolina takes off her helmet anyway, her long bangs whipping around her face for a few moments, and then the Pelican is gone.

Kimball smiles, takes a step toward her at last. “Welcome back, Agent. How’s the squad holding up?”

“We’ve had some tense moments,” Carolina says wryly, running a hand through her hair. “But they’re all good at their jobs. When they actually have to _do_ their jobs, instead of standing around thinking up insults.”

“So that’s your strategy?” Kimball asks, genuinely curious, as they walk toward the door to the stairs and descend, a full flight behind the rest of the troops. No one will think anything of her talking with a squad leader just returned from a mission, anyway. “Keep them busy, so they don’t have time to fight or think about fighting?”

Carolina nods. “That’s part of it.”

“And it works?”

“For now. We’re getting the job done.”

Kimball nods. “Can’t argue with your results.”

Carolina grins broadly. The glow about her is unmistakable, has been ever since she started running missions with the squad—her whole face beams with pride and satisfaction, she stands tall, leads with her chest and walks with a confident, almost aggressive stride. Despite being taller, Kimball finds herself quickening her pace to keep up.

Seeing her like this, Vanessa can almost imagine what she must have been like as a Freelancer, commanding a whole team of elite soldiers like herself. Demanding, powerful, fearless. A kind of leader Kimball’s never been, never will be. This Carolina  _almost_ seems a different woman from the one Vanessa has known in other moments. She wonders, sometimes, if Carolina’s the kind of woman you can ever fully know.

She tells herself she knows enough, at least for now.

“Do you need to touch base with your squad?”

“We debriefed in the air. It was a long ride.” Carolina’s pace quickens slightly as they reach the ground floor at last and exit the stairwell. “They have their orders. Curfew at oh-nine-hundred, morning drills with Wash at oh-five, breakfast, and report back to me at oh-seven to load up the bird and we fly.”

“That’s not a lot of R and R.”

“That’s the strategy.”

“And they aren’t complaining about the pace? They’re all keeping up?”

Carolina shoots her a sidelong glance. “I chose these soldiers for a reason. They’re up to the challenge.”

Kimball nods. “I trust your judgment.”

Carolina’s satisfied smile returns. “Thanks.”

They’ve come to the end of the corridor, and there’s no one else in sight. Vanessa stops, and turns to face her. “And what about you?”

“I’m fine.”

“I _meant_ it’s not a lot of R and R for you, either.”

Epsilon appears at her shoulder in a flash of blue. His sudden entrances never quite fail to startle Kimball. “That’s exactly what I said.”

“Offline,” Carolina says sternly.

“Yeah, yeah. Be sure and have her home by midnight.”

“ _Church_.”

“I’m going, I’m going!” Epsilon blinks out.

Carolina snickers, not without a note of fondness. “Anyway. As for that R and R… I think a lot can happen in a few hours, don’t you?”

 

Troop barracks have been repurposed from the adjoining apartment buildings, but Kimball and Doyle and their higher-ranking officers are housed in the training facility itself, close to Command Center so as to be on call at any hour of the day or night. She and Doyle have sequestered themselves on opposite ends of the gym’s office complex and it’s still too close for comfort, as far as Kimball is concerned.

Carolina hasn’t bothered to claim a space for herself, seeing as she’s spent more time out in the field than on base. And when she’s here…

 

“God,” Vanessa murmurs, dragging down the zipper of Carolina’s undersuit to just below her collarbone, “you’re a sight for sore eyes.”

“Your eyes that sore?” Carolina says smugly, stepping in close to unsnap Vanessa’s breastplate around the back without even looking. Could probably do it with her eyes closed. “Been doing my best to keep them occupied.”

“My eyes appreciate your efforts,” Vanessa returns, feeling for the clasps on Carolina’s armor, somehow impossibly more complicated than her own. “My hands, though, have been missing you.”

“How about your mouth?” Carolina doesn’t wait for her to answer, instead dragging Vanessa in to kiss her fiercely, all teeth and tongue, a rough and consuming kiss that leaves her gasping.

 _“Yes_ ,” she breathes, biting Carolina’s lip as they strip down piece by piece in a clatter of discarded plating, “that too.”

 

Carolina’s body is _more_ than a soldier’s body—that’s what came to mind, the first time. For Vanessa, too, is a soldier, but not like this. Every swell and stretch of muscle on Carolina feels years-hardened, life-hardened, even the casual strength in her embrace and the quickness of her reflexes, the way she can put Vanessa on her back so fast it steals her breath, dizzies her. It’s something beyond training, a level of physical prowess and proficiency Vanessa can’t imagine achieving in herself—not in years or decades of war. How is she like this? Who _is_ this woman who for all her five-feet-six inches barefoot feels almost larger than life? She knows in the most basic sense what _Freelancer_ means, not the same thing as _Spartan,_ though there’s a certain spine-chilling quality to both, in their own right—at least when spoken without the familiarity of a face she’s kissed, green eyes that have stared into hers, skin she’s touched with her own hands and felt shiver with pleasure.

The scar on Carolina’s right knee is still raised and ugly—though she says, every time, not to worry about the leg, it’s healing fine—but her body is a pattern of such scars, new and old. The worst of them mark the vulnerable points in the armor: a jagged one just forward of her left armpit, where the breastplate ends, where she took a knife once, she says, and a bullet wound in the upper thigh long since puckered to a pinpoint—that one, Carolina tells her, missed the artery by a hair, a half centimeter to the left and she’d have been dead before she hit the ground. Not all of them she talks about. There is an odd-shaped one at the side of her ribcage, almost as if the breastplate had crushed right through the undersuit and into her flesh. And the raised, pale ridge of tissue at the edge of her neural implant, at the base of her skull where her short hair doesn't quite cover—Carolina tensed, the first time Vanessa pressed lips to the back of her neck, and so she did not do it again.

 

She makes a game of it sometimes, when they’re lying like this, their skin sweaty and sticky and Carolina flopped on her stomach with her elbows everywhere taking up far more of the bunk than her tiny frame has any right to, and Vanessa draped half over her in half-hearted protest. Eyes closed, she lets her hands go where they please, following scar and mark and curve of muscle wherever they lead. Carolina rarely protests. She's not shy about her body in general, and Vanessa gets the sense that if ever there were to come a time in Carolina’s life where it were socially and practically acceptable, she’d be perfectly happy walking around naked.

Vanessa’s hands are lazy tonight, palm riding the ridge of Carolina’s spine down into the dip of her back—scar there, to the right of her spine, her thumb brushes over it as she goes. Over the swell of her ass, fingertips drifting lightly over the crease of her thighs. She feels a slight twitch under her finger, and repeats the motion more deliberately this time, right in the precise spot where the creases meet.

Carolina makes a very odd noise.

“Oh my god,” Vanessa says. “You’re _ticklish._ ”

“I am _not,”_ Carolina says emphatically into the pillow.

“You are. You _are!_ How did I not know this!”

“Only in certain places,” Carolina mutters.

Vanessa laughs, snuggling her knee between Carolina’s legs and curling closer around her. “Relax. I’ll never tell.”

Carolina makes a _hmmmph_ sound into the pillow, sounding very put out.

 

Vanessa half-wakes, sometime later, feeling movement in the narrow bunk—the creak of springs, the heat of another body pulling away, the blanket pulled back up and smoothed over her shoulder. She keeps her eyes closed, keeps breathing like she’s still asleep. A rustle of clothing, and then footsteps pad away, and silence falls once more.

 

0600 and the long cafeteria-turned-mess-hall is a dull roar of voices, dozens of soldiers fresh from morning drills grabbing all the rations they’re allowed. Moving back into the Capital—and, she’s forced to admit, cooperating with the Feds—has allowed them access to real food again, an unimaginable luxury just a month ago, and the troops on KP have stocked the hot table with trays of scrambled eggs from shelf-stable tetrapacks and what looks like some kind of rehydrated sausage, with various offerings of preserved fruit on the side. Kimball treats herself to a peach and mango fruit cup. The rest of her breakfast will be a protein bar. Leave the good food for the troops. They may as well enjoy it while it lasts.

The Reds and Blues, she’s noticed, don’t clump together in the mess. They spread out among the troops, for which she’s grateful: Grif and Simmons at one table surrounded by their squads, Lopez and Donut at another with a cluster of Fed troops. No sign of Wash yet, or Captain Tucker. The troops remain segregated for the most part, and Kimball feels the familiar tension creep up her spine as she crosses the room. Doyle is nowhere in sight, having taken his meal in private, she supposes. She doesn’t see him in the mess hall very often. Perhaps he sees her eating with the enlisted as a sign of the weakness of her authority, one more mark against her legitimacy as General.

She sighs, and turns to find a seat.

Carolina is already here, sitting with her squad—one of the few tables in the mess with an equal number of Federal and Republic soldiers. She catches Vanessa’s eye, flashes her a quick smile, and rises casually from the table.

They converge by the coffee bar, where Carolina refills her tall insulated mug. Kimball contents herself with a masala chai, steeped long and strong. She dunks the teabag up and down, glances at Carolina long enough for a quick smile. There won’t be time for any private good-byes before her squad deploys again.

“Where’s your next target?” Kimball asks, for something to say instead.

“To the west,” Carolina replies, brings the mug to her lips for a long swallow, then sets it back under the spout to top off again. “For the most part we’ve been hitting small research bases, some of them mobile. UNSC standard builds, but it’s all Charon-made. I want to start pushing to take some of the more entrenched bases, the permanent structures, especially the pre-colonial ones."

Vanessa nods. “Seems as though your squad can handle it. Just be—”

“I know. Be careful.” Carolina winks, takes another swallow and caps her mug. “It’ll be fine. We got this.” Her expression turns serious for a moment, the snap of her eyes softening and Vanessa feels that pierce of longing to stay near her, keep her close, even as she turns her attention deliberately back to her tea, and lets Carolina walk away.

Two voices near the hot table rise above the general din of the mess hall, and Vanessa tenses.

“—and look how well your fake Captains worked out for you. Didn’t one of ‘em get his whole squad killed?”

“You want to come over here and say that?” Oh dear. Velasquez has leapt up from a nearby table to join the fight, brown eyes flashing with anger.

“Calm down, _Volleyball_. We all know the real heroes were the Freelancers.” Nearby, several other Fed soldiers nod in agreement.

“Yeah, well that just shows what you _know_ , doesn’t it,” Velasquez throws back acidly, hands on hips. “Anybody tell you the Captains took down the worst Freelancer of them all?”

Halfway back to her table, Carolina stops dead in her tracks.

“Yeah!” It’s Palomo, now, and Captain Tucker, who's just walked in with Wash a few paces behind him, swivels in the direction of the fight. “It was called the Meta, and it was like this huge dude who stole all the AIs from the other Freelancers and they like, fused together in his head and turned him into this _monster_. He killed all those other Freelancers, he could turn invisible and warp time and he had the strength of like, twenty bears.”

The Fed soldier is unimpressed. “They only survived because they had Agent Washington with them. Nothing but a Freelancer could kill another Freelancer.”

“Oh yeah? ‘Cause the way I heard it, Washington was bleeding out in the snow when the Reds hooked the Meta to a Warthog and drove it off a cliff.”

The soldiers are still arguing, but Vanessa can’t look away from Carolina, whose hands look about to crush the coffee mug in their grip. Her eyes have gone glassy and blank, and the color has drained from her face like her throat has been slit.

“How do you drive a person off a cliff?”

“Not the _guy_ , idiot, the Warthog.”

“They drove a hog off a cliff. With them inside it.”

“Yeah! I mean, no—I mean—”

“Yeah, they sound like real fuckin’ heroes, Palomo.”

_“Officer on deck!”_

Marri stands at attention across the hall from her, dark eyes fixed on Kimball, the signature streak of gold bright in the dark braid lying over one shoulder. Kimball silently thanks whatever gods might exist for her Major. The barked warning draws every eye in the mess toward Kimball. New Republic soldiers snap to attention; Feds meet her with sullen stares, but cease their bickering. Marri’s strict training can be awkward at times, off-putting to the others, but today, it might just have stopped things from escalating, and Kimball’s grateful.

A few years younger than Kimball, Marri's been in the service since age sixteen—lied on the recruitment form to get away from home and enlisted with the Supply Corps for a colonization unit. Came to Chorus with the third wave, after the space elevator went up, and their unit was quickly absorbed into the Federation. Marri defected from Federal Army in the first year of the war, and lived in a New Republic holding cell for nineteen months feeding them every scrap of intel they could think of before the first General decided they could be trusted. They’ve served the Republic faithfully ever since, promoted to Major by Kimball herself when she succeeded to General.

“That’s enough,” Kimball declares, finding her command voice. “Break it up and finish your chow. I don’t want to hear about any stragglers in training today. Move.”

The troops disperse, amid grumbles and mutterings, but no outright fighting, at least. Kimball moves to Carolina’s side, but Carolina is already back in motion, no sign remaining of her sudden halt but the white-knuckle grip she still has on her coffee mug. Kimball barely makes it to her side before she catches up with her squad.

“Carolina,” she says quietly.

For a moment, she thinks Carolina didn’t hear her, but her footsteps slow.

“Is everything okay?”

“Fine.” Carolina’s voice is lower and tighter than normal.

She shouldn’t be doing this here, surrounded by everyone. But there’s no time to slip away.

“You’d tell me if you weren’t okay, right?”

Carolina blinks twice, rapidly. A pinch is forming between her brows, and her eyes are nervous, not meeting Vanessa’s.

“I’m fine,” she says again, turning away. “I have to go.” 

 

She wouldn’t dwell on it so much, maybe, if Carolina were here. If her mind weren’t searching, in her few quiet moments, for _anything_ to distract her from their shaky attempts at diplomacy and the overwhelming nebulousness of the situation. It’s an unfortunate habit, maybe, this looking for trouble everywhere, cracks in the armor where there are none, born of years underground jumping at any rumble, any sound from overhead. In her sleep, she hears Felix laughing, calling her _Vanessa_ , and it isn’t the contempt in his voice that hurts, so much as her own shame. She wakes smothered in it, shaking, heart racing, struggling to breathe evenly, and she wishes selfishly for someone to hold her in those dark moments. Instead she curls up tight in her bunk, knees drawn up, and breathes and breathes and grips the thin army blanket in her fists, trying to stop feeling the weight of her poor judgment pressing on her chest, squeezing the resolve out of her.

_What do you fight for, Vanessa?_

_For a better tomorrow._

_That’s worth it, even if you’re not._

She learned to talk herself down from panic, long before she was given a command. Learned to soothe herself in the dark, because no one else was going to.

 

For Carolina’s part, she carries on as usual, radios in her mission reports punctually and professionally and sends Vanessa photos and saucy texts with the kind of delightful unprofessionalism Vanessa’s come to know and love from her. She seems fine, and it’s almost enough to make her forget what happened in the mess hall, forget the blanched, blasted-out look on Carolina’s face.

Carolina sends her a rare face pic with her bangs hanging over one eye, looking directly into the camera with a confident smirk. She’s fine. She’s stunning. Bright green eyes, the little mole near the corner of her mouth, her mouth that is warmly and tantalizingly familiar, all enough to make Vanessa forget how little she really knows about her Freelancer—almost.

 

Kimball’s days should, in theory, be too full to allow for much distraction. Early to rise, morning inspection on the training floor. (Wash encourages this, tells them it’s good for troop discipline. Suggests the Generals drop in for unannounced inspections as well, which sounds good in theory, but it’s rare either she or Doyle can slot anything extra into their schedules.) Breakfast hastily eaten, quick review of the day’s duty rosters, an hour or so for her own training if she can squeeze it in (she needs to maintain her own fitness as well as the troops, after all), and then the endless strategy sessions and organizational meetings, punctuated by lunch and Doyle’s insistence on afternoon tea (good for morale, he says, and Vanessa might just have to concede that point—privately) and supper and…

And every rumble of aircraft overhead has Kimball tensing, adrenaline flooding her veins and _Fall back to the tunnels! Everyone, go, go!_ jumping into her throat, barely swallowed.

“My dear Miss Kimball,” Doyle simpers at her, as if he doesn’t jump out of his skin every time someone knocks at the Command Center door, or walks too loudly, or raises their voice, “are you quite all right?”

“Fine,” she says through gritted teeth.

“Then as to the schedule—”

They’ve been working on a revised guard rotation for the base, with increased coverage, since every victory in the field increases the likelihood of retaliation at any time. Like most of their meetings, this conversation seems perpetually one poor choice of words away from descending into a shouting match. General Doyle kicked things off with the oh-so-diplomatic suggestion that the Federal army could handle a higher number of shifts—since of course, he just had to add, the official army no doubt had the superior training. It was all Kimball could do to keep from spitting, but she managed to smile through gritted teeth and suggest that the New Republic were more than capable of shouldering their fair share of the burden. She managed _not_  to say that his attempts to disproportionately distribute power and authority to his own troops was both transparent and insulting and she’d already lived through Federation martial law once and didn’t care to repeat the experience, thank you very much.

A guard schedule. The simplest things take hours and days of exhausting, frustrating negotiations to decide. _You believed in consensus, once. You believed in cooperation. You believed in a system that could truly serve the people and you believed that human beings, if they_ tried _, could resolve their disputes with words. You used to believe that._

Thus says the idealist and the former pacifist in her, while the soldier and officer she has become says, how long, really, before they’re forced to take up arms again? How long can this detente truly last?

 

She takes a walk alone up to the roof. No Pelicans coming or going at the moment—Aqua Squad and several others out in the field, the remaining troops sequestered below. The familiar skyline sprawls gray and empty before her eyes. Vanessa did not grow up in Armonia, but near enough she’d been to the city many times, and eventually enrolled in the University. Back when the streets were full of motion and life. Even then, you could smell it—the smoggy sky from the processing plants along the river down the western end. And outside the city, you hadn’t to drive far before the smell of smoke and dust and ash filled the air. Mom came home thick with it every day, from working out on the seam. Her softness still smells of it, in Vanessa’s mind, a smell half-mineral and earthy, half acrid and alien, in a way she wouldn’t understand until later in her life, until the first time she saw a plasma rifle not made by human hands.

Her COM pad pings. She doesn’t check it right away. It’s cooler today, and she has her helmet off, and there’s enough of a breeze up here to ruffle her bangs slightly. Her hair needs a trim, badly—it tickles the back of her neck, the front is getting just long enough to get in her eyes, and the blue at the tips is faded and needs to be redone. But the breeze feels good on her face, only a little smokey and a little gritty, fresher by far than she remembers.

Ironic then, that while they’ve been busy killing one another, the planet has finally begun to heal, a little.

She misses the reservoir. It’s silly. But there came to be something comforting about the soft glow of the bioluminescent algae blanketing the water and the lichen on the cavern walls, the pungent pond smell that bled through her air filter. The safety of the deep dark in the old mines with their network of tunnels so vast and twisting even the rebels did not know for sure the extent of their reach. Sometimes it felt like _this_ was their real home, and why keep surfacing to fight, when they could just hide? Just disappear beneath Chorus’s rocky desert and never be seen again.

Hiding’s for chumps, Felix would say. You wait for them to find you here, you’re giving them the perfect chance to box you in. You’ll be trapped, and either they’ll storm in and kill every last one of you, or they’ll just back you all into the tunnels and block you in and wait for you to starve.

You could’ve gone anywhere! she hears Doyle saying. Anywhere on the planet! No one would have stopped you!

They won’t stop, Felix said. They won’t stop until you’re all dead, what don’t you get about that?

She checks her COM pad at last. There’s a new message, one of Carolina’s usual. She scrolls past, saving it for later. The solitude of the roof has brought her a brief, rare peace, and it feels fragile, like it might blow away with a breath of wind. She feels like closing her eyes, breathing deep of the gray-green sky until she finds the blue beneath, tastes it again.

Instead she scrolls idly through her feeds. There’s no real media on Chorus, not anymore. And no off-world communication but it’s been that way for many years. She can’t remember the last piece of real off-world news she heard, much less the last piece she believed. What they have is their local chatternet feeds, public ones as well as the Republic’s secure feeds for sensitive material. Private Ganoush currently runs one of the more popular Republic feeds on Chirp, sharing regular updates as well as humor and other morale boosters. It occurs to her to wonder if the Federation has someone doing the same thing. Probably.

But even the snippets of news—bases taken by the squads in the field, training updates, troop gossip—feels very distant at the moment. Vanessa finds herself scrolling mindlessly, not really reading, and closes the feed and looks out into the horizon once again. She thinks of Aqua Squad, far away laying siege to yet another Charon base, Carolina’s no-nonsense command voice calling orders to her troops, and thinks of her own voice rising with frustration in negotiations with Doyle. She feels vaguely, wearily ashamed, and in this moment, very much alone.

 

When Carolina returns, aglow from her mission, swaggering ten feet tall through the corridors swarmed by troops wanting to catch a glimpse, see the action, hear the story, Private Ganoush runs to her side, COM pad on record getting quotes for NRN. And in the rush and chatter of excitement, Carolina’s eyes land on her, and Vanessa knows with a certainty Carolina will be in her bed tonight. In her bed all bare skin and hands and lips and tongue and teeth. And gone before morning.

She has never said no to this, it has never _occurred_ to her to say no to this, the way the fiery maelstrom of Carolina’s presence pulls her in, the way the universe folds in on her with Carolina's hands on her skin, her mouth between her thighs, and she doesn’t mind. For a time, things aren't so heavy.

 

But in the dark when she feels Carolina’s weight shift that night, Vanessa opens her eyes and puts a hand on her back, right in the center of her spine.

The shadow that is Carolina pauses in the dark.

“Sorry,” she says after a minute. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I wasn’t asleep,” Vanessa says. “It’s okay.”

A beat of silence passes.

“You don’t have to leave, you know.”

Muscles tense under her palm.

“You need your sleep,” Carolina says, quietly.

“If the bed’s too small—”

“The bed’s fine.”

“Then stay. I’ll sleep fine, don’t worry.”

“I should go.”

“Carolina…”

Carolina turns. Vanessa’s eyes are adjusting to the dark, enough to make out the contours of her face, looking more angular in the dark. The charge light on Vanessa’s COM pad and the soft blue emergency light over the door is just enough to make out her eyes, going wide with concern. “What? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing—nothing’s wrong, I just…”

Carolina lets her breath out slowly, her shoulders sinking slightly.

She leans over and kisses Vanessa’s forehead. Sweet in an odd, stilted way. Vanessa’s left still fumbling for a response as Carolina stands, reaching for the hooded sweatshirt she’s left on the floor, the one Vanessa gave her back at the old base.

“‘Night, Vanessa,” she says, shrugging the hoodie on, and then she’s gone.

 

She looks for Carolina in the mess that morning, but she’s not there—no sign of her or Aqua Squad. Vanessa takes her seat with Marri, scanning the hall distractedly as she chews on her protein bar.

“They left early,” Marri says, and Vanessa starts. The sharp brown eyes of her young officer meet hers with a knowing seriousness, and Vanessa feels vaguely ashamed. “Took their rations on the go. Saw the bird lift off at oh-six. Were you expecting her?”

“No,” Kimball says quickly, hiding her embarrassment in a hasty sip of her tea. “No, I just thought I would touch base before they left.”

Marri nods slowly, and takes a sip of their own tea. They have eggs on their plate, no meat, a fruit cup. “Permission to speak freely, ma’am.”

“Marri, you know you always have that.”

Marri’s impassive countenance cracks into a smile, just for a moment. They pause to smooth back an almost invisible wisp of hair into their tight ponytail. “Be careful with her.”

Kimball opens her mouth and closes it.

“I hope I’m not out of line, General.”

“Can you… elaborate?”

“I don’t mean with the missions or the troop deployment. Agent Carolina seems… highly competent.”

“But?”

“And I trust your judgment as to her loyalties.”

Marri’s tone is sincere. Kimball feels gutted by guilt anyway. She sets down what remains of her protein bar, suddenly less hungry. “But.”

“But she’s still a Freelancer. She’s still UNSC.”

“Was. And the Federation isn’t the UNSC, Marri.”

“It was once.” Marri’s hand tightens slightly around their mug. “Fool me once and all that shit. I don’t mean she’s a puppet like them. Or a plant like Felix. But you know what those supersoldiers were made for. Crushing insurgent scum like us.”

“She’s not a Spartan.”

“Same idea, though.”

“Not exactly.”

Marri cocks their head, genuinely curious. “She tell you about it?”

“No, not much.” Not anything, really. She knows a few names, a story or two. That the program was investigated after the war, that Carolina and Wash and the Reds and Blues managed to track down the Director where the authorities had failed. But the specifics of the program itself…

“Well. Like I said… I trust you with the tactics, General. Just be careful with her… you know. Personally. Just my angle on it. She was one of them once.”

“So were you,” Kimball points out, gently.

Marri nods, sadness in their eyes. “I know.”

 

It’s with all this on her mind on Aqua Squad’s next return that she asks Carolina to dinner.

“What,” Carolina says, “just the two of us? Like a date?”

“Well, it’s not like I can take you out to a fancy restaurant, since there aren’t any left, and we haven’t had a functional economy on this planet for at least five years, but something like that, yes.”

Carolina grins. “Guess I can leave the squad to fend for themselves in the mess for one night.”

Kimball grimaces. “I don’t think your squad’s the problem.”

“You’d be surprised,” Carolina says dryly.

“Seems like you’re holding them together. On more than just the threat of extra laps.”

Carolina snorts. “Was that a dig at Wash?”

Vanessa smiles in spite of herself. “Maybe just a little.”

“I won’t tell him.” Carolina smiles, rakes a gloved hand through her helmet hair. “Let me grab a shower. Civvies for dinner?”

“Now you’re getting the idea.”

“Think I am.” Carolina winks and Vanessa feels a happy flush creep into her cheeks. “Oh-six-hundred? Pick you up at your quarters?”

“I am not authorizing you to drive a hog indoors,” Vanessa says sternly. Not that she wouldn’t like to be “picked up” Carolina-style, like that time back at the old base. Still makes her feel a little fluttery, thinking about it. One day again, maybe.

In the meantime, it seems like a good day to touch up her hair.

 

Carolina arrives at her door sharply at oh-six, showered and smelling fresh and faintly fruity, her bangs swept dramatically over one eye, while in the back her short hair is fluffed up from her neck, the tips spikey with gel. What arrests Vanessa the most, though, is that she’s wearing makeup—strawberry pink lip gloss, kohl liner over her eyes looking very dramatic against her pale skin. Vanessa might feel a touch underdressed, and hopes she doesn’t smell too strongly of hair dye, but she gave herself a solid appraisal in the mirror before answering the door, and she knows she looks good, the blue tips of her hair bold against the black. She’s not much for makeup herself, but it’s nice to look the way she wants to again, bright and freshly scrubbed. Even the scars on the left side of her face, though prominent, don’t jar her to look at anymore. Just another part of her.

Funny thing, she’s only ever seen Carolina in _her_ clothes, outside of armor—Carolina didn’t have a set of civvies to her name, when they met. Vanessa told her to keep the outfit, it was no problem, especially the sweatshirt which was just her color—it was meant to be. Colors are important.

But it seems Carolina’s acquired some clothes of her own: instead of Vanessa’s jeans cuffed and held up with a belt, she’s dressed in well-fitting black leggings, and a long aquamarine t-shirt with a wide neck that sits off center, one black bra strap showing. The soft fabric drapes loosely over her compact frame, and ripples when she moves.

“You look lovely,” Vanessa says softly, a little enraptured by the whole picture, but especially the way the leggings accentuate Carolina’s hard-muscled legs.

“Not bad yourself,” Carolina returns, and Vanessa smiles, a bit sheepishly. She’s wearing the same thing she wore the night of the party—jeans, her ultramarine button-down, the top two buttons undone. Simple, but it’s her favorite. Colors are important.

She’s surprised, but pleased, when Carolina takes her hand. “So, where are we going?”

 

“This is where I come to think, these days,” Vanessa says by way of explanation as they carry their food up to the rooftop. She directs them to the far end, where a long bench sits just outside the basketball court’s high chainlink cage, and they sit facing the city, trays in their laps, as the sun sinks lazily over the skyline. Tonight’s ration is black bean burgers, cooked a bit dryer than they should be, but they’re nutritious and vegetarian and packed with protein. With some hot sauce they aren’t half bad, and the nice thing about hot sauce is, it keeps _forever_. Vanessa supposes that’s one blessing she ought to count. Chorus will likely exhaust its ammo stores before its supply of sriracha.

“Can’t complain about the chow here,” Carolina remarks, stuffing enthusiastic bites into her mouth. She too has doused her burger in a heavy coat of hot sauce, which makes Vanessa smile. They have that much in common, anyway. It’s the little things. “Beats the hell out of field rations.”

“Wish I could be out there with you,” Vanessa confesses before she can stop herself.

Carolina casts her a sidelong glance. “Guess you’re needed here more.”

“Unfortunate but true.” Vanessa swallows another bite. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am for your leadership, Carolina. What you’ve been able to accomplish with your squad is a true bright spot in all of this.”

Carolina’s face tenses slightly at the word _leadership._

“You’re doing good work,” Vanessa says, more cautiously.

“Thanks.” The tension vanishes so quickly Vanessa thinks perhaps she imagined it. Carolina’s smile is easier when she adds, “We’re finding a lot of modified Freelancer tech at these outposts—not all of it usable, but it’s clear they were working on equipment taken from our crash site.”

“What kind of Freelancer tech?” Vanessa tilts her head curiously.

“Armor enhancements, things like my speed unit, but we all had different ones. Holographic decoys, enhanced shields, healing units. Things like that.”

“Those certainly sound useful.”

"They will be. Especially given the nature of our position now. We’re planning to hit one of the larger outposts next, and there’s a good chance of attracting more unwanted attention.”

Vanessa nods. “You’re heading back out tomorrow?”

“Bright and early.”

“You can stay long enough for breakfast, yes?”

Carolina’s eyes dart sideways again, a look half-guilty.

Vanessa cracks a smile, tries to keep her voice light. “My reasons may be partly selfish, but I’m sure your squad wouldn’t mind another sit-down meal. Like you said, it beats field rations.”

“Mm.”

Didn’t they once have other things to talk about? Or has it _always_ been the war? But of course it has. Everything has always been the war.

I want to know you, Vanessa thinks, staring over the reddening horizon until her eyes begin to blur. I want you to know me. But maybe this is us. Maybe all we are is war.

_You’re more than that, you know._

_What if I’m not?_

She remembers the night at the hospital and something in her inexplicably aches.

But even that was the war. Vanessa devastated over Felix, shaken over how _close_ they all came to the end. How she and Doyle were in range of each other, close enough to fire the shots that could’ve ended it all. She had her finger on the goddamn trigger. Instead, he spoke her name. She spoke his.

They had to say their piece, the both of them. They couldn’t resist. In the end, neither of them were willing to die without having the last word.

It’s why any of them are still alive, she supposes.

 _We’re past the time for talk_ , her first General said, so many times. She’d come to believe it. Seems it wasn’t so after all.

“Did I ever tell you about my hometown?” Vanessa says, knowing full well she hasn’t.

Carolina shakes her head, swallowing a mouthful of food. “I don’t think so.”

“Little town called Coda, across the river. Mom worked for AMAC—”

“AMAC?”

“Armonia Mineral Assets Corporation. Mostly just a front for excavating alien technology and shipping it offworld, but you know. I didn’t know that back then. I was just a kid.” Vanessa’s hands grow restless, reaching up to fiddle with her hair out of habit, even though it’s no longer falling in her eyes.

Carolina glances at her. “For some reason I thought you were from the city.”

“Oh, no. I went to university here, but I grew up out in the boonies. Like a lot of these kids.” A lot of the rebel kids, she thinks, but keeps that part to herself.

Carolina looks genuinely interested. “Tell me about it.”

“Nice little town. I mean it always seemed like it when I was a kid. It was just me and my mom growing up, so we had a duplex with another family—a dad and three kids, I used to play with the younger two, we’d have sleepovers back and forth. I never felt like it was fair, that they had to fit twice as many people into the same amount of space.” Vanessa smiles faintly. “So we just kind of shared it all. We were good friends. Mom worked with the father, it was mostly mining folks in town.”

Carolina nods.

“My mom never saw the war,” Vanessa adds, a little haltingly, because it always comes back to _this_ , every story, every memory, everyone’s childhood and family. Where all roads lead. “She was around for the early protests, but…” Never saw her only daughter turn from peaceful demonstrator waving a blue flag on campus to soldier in desert drab, and then to officer, and then to General.

She hopes she honors her mother, somehow, with what she does. With what she fights for.

Carolina nods again, more slowly. “I’m sorry.”

And Vanessa waits, and a stillness settles between them, and it takes her a minute to realize she has been practically holding her breath, for—what? For a story given in return, perhaps, a piece of memory shared. But Carolina goes quiet, and they sit looking out over the city in silence.

Their meals finished, Carolina’s hand finds hers on the bench between them, and when Kimball glances at her, Carolina’s face has relaxed, her lips curved into a faint smile as her eyes gaze distantly toward the skyline. Her whole countenance has taken on a rare peace. Vanessa should be content, too, in this brief time they have together, and yet she still feels—not unhappy, but somehow at a loss.


End file.
